


Outburst

by captainraz



Series: Discretion [4]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainraz/pseuds/captainraz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best laid plans...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outburst

Leslie had put together a pretty decent plan regarding Miranda and Andy’s official coming out.

They’d sat down together and scheduled six weeks of regular dinners between the two lovers, making sure each occasion was out in public at very, very nice restaurants. And if that didn’t tip the press off then they should get the picture when Andy attended the Met Gala at Miranda’s side in carefully coordinated (but not matching) outfits. And if that _still_ didn’t do it then the carefully crafted press release they’d written to put out the morning after the Gala would definitely do it.

Six weeks or less and everyone in New York would know that Miranda Priestly and Andrea Sachs were together.

It really was a good plan and Andy could see the merits of every single step. There was only one teeny tiny little flaw in the plan. It relied almost entirely on Andy’s patience, which was currently being worn very, very thin.

Andy stared at her fellow reporter, hoping that the force of her glare would either shut him up or make him spontaneously combust. At this point she wasn’t bothered which one. After five minutes he hadn’t noticed her death glare so Andy tried to be the bigger person; she reminded herself that she was at a conference with a large number of her colleagues and peers. It was simply unfortunate that her “peers” included the type of vulture that worked Page Six and often made Miranda’s life miserable—and would soon be an annoyance in Andy’s own life. This conference was a good opportunity to meet the movers and shakers in the industry and Andy’s career progression would undoubtedly be hampered by punching this guy, no matter how much of an asshole he was being.

She vowed to ignore him, despite the fact he was currently saying some very unpleasant things about her girlfriend. Miranda was more than capable of dealing with kind of crap herself, and in any case, it wasn’t anything Andy hadn’t heard before. Ice Queen. Devil in Heels. The nicknames heaped on the woman she loved were unpleasant but Andy knew how wrong they were.

_If only they knew just how hot the Ice Queen of fashion is in bed,_ thought Andy as she attempted to wrest her attention away from the asshat talking shit about Miranda and back to the woman next to her. She had some fascinating things to say about the increasingly precarious position of print media in a digital age that Andy was actually quite interested in.

She managed to keep her attention on her own conversation for all of ten minutes.

When Andy tuned back in to the man’s increasingly noisy ranting she realised that not only had he failed to move on from berating Miranda (and her sex drive, her string of failed marriages and her parenting ability) he’d actually expanded his repertoire to include Caroline and Cassidy. _This_ was something Andy couldn’t ignore as easily. They were twelve years old, still kids really, and while they were pretty sharp about a lot of things they had no way to defend themselves against a middle aged man chatting shit about them at a conference for supposed professionals. Andy found her temper was wearing as thin as her patience and her own professionalism was rapidly taking a back seat to other concerns.

“Spoilt brats like every other kid of rich parents we publish stories about,” said the man, who Andy had decided had a very unpleasant face. The small group of people who’d been listening to his tirade for the last quarter of an hour nodded in apparent agreement with his statement. “They’re nearly teenagers now, which means things are about to get good.” He went on to expound at great length about the drink and drug problems the girls would “inevitably” succumb to and was entirely too gleeful about the sexual misadventures all that debauchery would end with.

Andy saw red.

She couldn’t remember being this angry in her life. She strode over the man, yelling “you can’t say that about my daughters,” professionalism and discretion be damned. The next thing she knew the asshole was sprawled across the floor with a bloody nose, her knuckles were stinging and the entire conference hall had gone deathly silent. The only thing Andy could hear was the sound of her heart beating wildly in her chest.

The man looked up at her with shock and fear in his eyes. “You’re a fucking psycho bitch,” he said, wiping at the blood pouring from his face.

Andy moved to hit him again but a hand clamped firmly around her arm and started to drag her away. Running purely on instinct Andy almost punched this new threat as well but managed to pull back when she realised it was one of her colleagues from the Mirror. She allowed herself to be escorted outside for some fresh air.

As the adrenaline rush of her unprecedented rage drained from her body she could also hear her own thoughts again and they were telling her what a monumentally bad plan it had been to hit that guy, no matter what he’d been saying about Caroline and Cassidy. Her bruised and swollen hand concurred. After a few deep breaths to fully cleanse her system of the anger the panic set in as she remembered what she’d yelled to practically every member of the New York press.

She, Miranda and Leslie had spent all that time putting together a plan for revealing their relationship to the public in a controlled way and in the space of a few minutes Andy might have ruined all that work because of her damned temper. The temptation to lash out and punch the wall was strong but she managed to control herself. This time.

“Hey, you okay?” asked her colleague, Lila.

Andy nodded. “I’m fine, I just…” She didn’t even know what.

Lila offered her a Kleenex. “For your face,” she said.

It was only then that Andy realised she was crying. As she reached out to take the tissue she noticed that her hands were shaking, and her breathing was shallow and coming far too quickly. She was one the verge of having a panic attack. It had been a while but she recognised the symptoms.

Andy waved off Lila’s sympathy and told her to go back inside. There was only one thing on Andy’s mind, one thing that would help; she had to call Miranda.

First Andy had to calm herself down, at least a little. She crouched down with her head between her legs, taking slow deep breaths until she didn’t feel white so much like hyperventilating. Then she grabbed her phone.

Thankfully Miranda picked up after a few rings. “What’s wrong?” she snapped, which threw Andy off balance. Someone must be with her. Still, it wasn’t the greeting she’d been expecting and Andy burst into tears.

“I fucked up Miranda,” she managed to get out between sobs. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Andy could almost hear Miranda pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m sure you’ve done nothing of the sort. Now, try to calm down and tell me what’s happened.”

Somehow Andy managed to relay the entire story despite the tears. Part way through her anger flared up again and she cursed up a storm, much to Miranda’s audible disgust. By the end of it she was emotionally drained and hiccuping pathetically down the phone.

Miranda was quiet for a long time. So long that Andy started worrying.

“Miranda?” she said, hating how small and timid her voice sounded. “I’m so sorry. I fucked up, I fucked up and i don’t know what to do? How do I fix this?”

“Come here,” Miranda said at last.

“What?”

“Get a cab and come here. To my office.”

“Are– are you sure? I– I mean… if it’s okay?” Andy was shocked into stuttering helplessly. She hadn’t set foot in the Elias-Clarke building since she’d cleared out her desk more than two years ago.

“Do I often say things without being sure of them and of myself?” Miranda’s words were sharp but her tone was soft, almost reassuring.

Andy sighed. “Everyone at Runway will know, are you sure you’re ready for that? We had a plan.”

“Our plans have been moved up Andrea. I am not afraid of anyone’s reaction and I know you aren’t either. You’re upset and I need to see you. Come to my office. Please.”

It was the quiet word at the end that undid Andy, Miranda’s unspoken need to comfort and be comforted. Andy gets to hear the words ‘please’ fall from those lips a lot more often than most people but it’s still not an everyday occurrence. That word said in that tone of voice proved Miranda was just as rattled as Andy was, needed reassurance just as much.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Good.” And then Miranda hung up. Some things never change.

Less than half an hour later Andy was stood outside the Elias-Clarke building wondering if she actually had enough courage to go up. Emily would have a heart attack if she saw her at Runway without being warned first. The two of them had somehow managed to carve out a friendship in the last two years but there were rules. Thankfully the caustic Brit now worked with Nigel instead of sitting right outside Miranda’s office.

She sighed. If she didn’t show up soon Miranda would only call back and demand to know where she was. Andy screwed up her courage and dived in.

After her momentary crisis getting inside was anticlimactic. Security had a pass already waiting for her and no one on the Runway floor even blinked at her presence. It was possible that turnover was high enough that almost no one who’d worked with Andy was still there. Or more likely no one cared enough to remember just one in a long line of Miranda’s assistants. Andy didn’t have any trouble until she ran into one of the current assistants and her demand to know whether she had an appointment was cut off by Miranda’s gentle tones floating out of the office.

She went straight in and shut the door behind her at Miranda’s instruction. Then she stood in the middle of the room, unsure of herself, very much not enjoying the odd mixture of the familiar and the entirely new. Miranda looked her up and down and suddenly Andy was that mousy young woman in the cerulean sweater again.

The discomfort lasted until Miranda crossed her office in three quick strides and wrapped her arms around the younger woman. Andy relaxed into the familiar embrace, barely holding back a sob of relief.

“Are you alright darling?” Miranda asked, running her fingers through Andy’s hair. Andy hadn’t realised how much she’d needed to hear the endearment until now and she felt some of the tension go out of her muscles. Miranda let go of her and led her to the sofa in the corner.

“Better now I’m here with you but I’m still worried. I really messed up this time, M.”

“Nonsense.”

“I punched a guy. In front of about a hundred journalists. And yelled about Caroline and Cassidy being my daughters. How are things not messed up?”

“Andrea.” The word was almost a sigh. “We were planning on announcing our relationship publicly anyway, does it matter that it might happen a little sooner than we’d hoped? Unless you’ve changed your mind about being ready for this?”

“No!” said Andy vehemently. “I’ve not change my mind, it’s just… We wanted to do things on our terms and it’s out of our hands now. Which was exactly what we wanted to avoid.” She wrung her hands together in frustration having forgotten about her swollen knuckles. She winced at the contact, something Miranda didn’t fail to notice.

“Do you need to see a doctor?” she asked, brows furrowed with worry.

“It’ll be fine,” said Andy, “it just needs some ice or something. I’m more concerned with what Page Six might say tomorrow.”

“It will probably be crass and pathetic,” said Miranda, sighing dramatically, the voice of having experience the dubious attentions of that rag for more years than she wanted to count. “Assuming your friend decides to print anything at all.”

“I probably broke his nose, publishing my little confession is the least he could do to get revenge.” Panic stabbed Andy in the chest and she felt all the blood drain from her face. “What if he decides to press charges?”

“Then we’ll deal with it the same way we deal with most press intrusion; hold our heads up high, say nothing and send my lawyer after anyone causing too much trouble.”

“I don’t–” Andy tried to object to Miranda threatening people with lawyers but she was cut off by the coldest glare in Miranda’s arsenal.

“I will defend you with every resource I have, Andrea, never doubt that.”

Andy thought that probably shouldn’t make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside but right now she didn’t care. What had happened had happened, and she and Miranda would deal with the fallout together. She felt a lot better about the whole thing.

“Now,” said Miranda after watching Andy grin foolishly at her with utmost patience for a few moments. “Shall we go home?”

“That sounds wonderful.”

***

The next day Page Six was surprisingly quiet on the subject. There was a good chance the only reason for this was an absence of photographic evidence of the incident (and the relationship Andy had accidentally confirmed) and therefore wasn’t technically within Page Six’s remit. Lack of evidence also meant that the threat of Miranda’s retaliation—and her lawyers—was rather more intimidating than usual.

Andy harboured a naive hope that, since his colleagues had heard what had gotten him punched, they might have decided he deserved it and convinced him not to publish anything.

That hope lasted until they saw the society section of the paper, which contained a rather scathing opinion piece about Miranda, her romantic history and her family life. Which unfortunately also included allusions to the fact Miranda Priestly had a new lover, who was not only a woman but rather see lot younger than the Queen of Fashion and, at least according to the article, was possibly mentally unstable. Andy wasn’t actually named in the article, but since half the New York press had witness her outburst there was no doubt who the bastard was referring to.

The cat was out of the bag.

Leslie was pissed, of course, but Miranda had been a thorn in her side for nearly two decades so they could cope with that. Caroline and Cassidy were utterly outraged by what this guy had said about Andy, though they calmed down a bit when she explained to them what had happened. Apparently it was ‘way cool’ that Andy had punched someone in their defence and, since things were pretty much out in the open now, could they tell their friends. Miranda was less than pleased about that.

The paparazzi camped outside the townhouse for a few days making everyone’s lives just that little bit more miserable. Andy considered using the back door when she got in from work but decided to hell with it. The press got their pictures of Miranda Priestly’s much younger lover and the next day they published the press release that had been planned for after the Met Gala, stopping any rumours before they had chance to form.

It was done. They were out.


End file.
